Novak's Name Surfaces in Watergate Papers

[Rose Siding]

With the Valerie Plame case behind us, we have a chance to revisit the names leaked by the granddaddy of all tipsters: Mark Felt, a.k.a. "Deep Throat." And yes: Robert Novak is there, too.

The original notes from Bob Woodward's famous meetings with Felt have just been released by the University of Texas, which paid Woodward and Carl Bernstein $5 million for the Watergate papers in 2003 -- with a provision that confidential sources would be protected until they die or go public. Felt revealed his identity in 2005, and the online exhibition now includes eight pages of typed notes from Woodward's conversations with him -- identified as "X" or "my friend" -- and two handwritten pages of an on-the-record interview he gave for another story.

Deep Throat calls G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt "the lowest," and Jeb Magruder an "SOB." Our favorite? Dish from the Oct. 9, 1972, garage meeting, where Woodward met his old friend at 1:30 a.m. and spent more than four hours talking. Felt says that Martha Mitchell didn't know anything "but that doesn't mean she won't talk" and that Nixon's men leaked information to the New York Times, Washington Post, Jack Anderson and . . . Novak, who at the time wrote a political column with Rowland Evans. That means the Prince of Darkness has been getting leaks from the White House for 35 years -- gotta be some kind of record.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/10/AR2007041000055.html

[bemildred]

1. It is truly amazing how many incompetent weasels from back then

are still around, neck deep in the current debacle, and still being the same incompetent weasels they were back then, but on a much larger scale. Almost all of the Neocons fall in that category, plus lots of others like Nofacts.

[EC]

2. I wonder if that "leaked" info to Novak

and others was the Martha Mitchell is a crazy woman stuff they used to discredit her? I seem to remember a Novak column about her...